Palm Leaf Manuscript Conservation: How India’s Ancient Texts Are Preserved!

Before paper, before printing, India wrote its knowledge on palm leaves, epics, scriptures, sciences, and shastras, incised by hand and bound between wooden covers. Preserving these fragile manuscripts is a craft in itself. At Lipikalpa 2026, Dr. P. Perumal, former Director of the Saraswathi Mahal Museum in Thanjavur (one of Asia’s oldest and most important manuscript repositories), led an intensive conservation workshop. Here is what he taught.

A palm-leaf manuscript isn’t written with ink or pen but is incised with a stylus, paired with a small folding knife to cut the leaf. It is a two-handed craft: one hand steadies the leaf while the other guides the stylus, resting against the writer’s thumbnail to shape the small, rounded letterforms characteristic of the script. Dr. Perumal called it “the total automatic writing of the palm leaf.” To add the crystal-clear visibility of these letters, they add a mixture of lamp soot (kajal) and oil, rubbing it onto the surface and leaving the ink caught in grooves. Hence, these manuscripts survived in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and the very historic Nandinagari script as well!

Understanding the threats is the first step in conservation. Dr. Perumal grouped them into biological and environmental agents:

• Fungus, which makes leaves stick together so they cannot be separated without tearing; conservators add a little moisture to loosen the bond before gently scraping them apart.
• Insects, cockroaches, termites, and especially bookworms, which bore through entire sheets and even wooden covers, causing losses that are often irreversible.
• Dust, heat, and dryness, which draw moisture from the leaves over time until they turn brittle and crack during ordinary handling.

Long before modern chemistry, Indian manuscript-keepers developed ingenious preservation methods, and Dr. Perumal shared several. One striking example was the historical use of snake slough, a snake’s shed skin, placed at the bottom of manuscript cupboards to deter termites, a practice traced to a librarian’s written record from 1882. He also described a temple storage method in which manuscripts were packed with a moisture-regulating mixture of fine sand and lime (sunna), renewed every year or two, linked to the tradition of the Grantha Samadhi at the Madurai temple. As palm leaves naturally dry out, libraries re-oil their collections roughly every 5 years with citronella or oil, restoring flexibility with lamp soot, and can even re-ink other letters!

Dr. Perumal traced how modern conservation evolved. For years, archives used highly toxic fumigant gases to kill insects and fungus, a practice that has been largely abandoned because venting the gases altered the atmosphere and eventually caused more damage than it prevented. The smarter solution conservation science developed was to remove oxygen rather than add chemicals. His logic was elegant: insects and fungus, like most living things, need oxygen, food, and water, and the food (the manuscript itself) is unavoidable, so removing oxygen starves them without any chemical treatment. Oxygen, he noted, also drives ordinary decay: rusting iron, tarnishing silver, and fading dye are all oxidation. This insight led to Ageless, an oxygen-absorbing tablet sealed into a display case, and to nitrogen- and helium-based storage now used by major institutions.

For manuscripts already damaged, Dr. Perumal demonstrated a layered set of repairs. Small tears and termite holes can be filled with tissue paper (including fine Japanese tissue) cut precisely and joined to the original leaf. Fragile or actively deteriorating leaves are protected through encapsulation, sealing the leaf between sheets of polyester film so it can be handled and studied without further stress, and stabilised with conservation adhesives such as Paraloid B72. And in a remarkable final step, once a manuscript is digitised, its image can be used to produce a fresh palm leaf through laser-beam writing, effectively recreating the original text on new material, a powerful safeguard against the eventual loss of the source.

Over the multi-day workshop, students did not just listen; they worked side by side with the master conservator, etching and inking their own palm leaves, repairing centuries-old paper, and learning bookbinding and archival enclosure. Dr. Perumal displayed rare treasures from the Rigveda and Chitra Ramayana manuscripts to the distinctive Modi script of Maratha royal records, and even discussed the structural anatomy of Tanjore paintings. He also linked the work to its deeper purpose, noting National Library Day on 12 August, marking the birth anniversary of Dr. S. R. Ranganathan, the father of Indian library science. His central lesson was simple and profound: preserving a manuscript is not merely a technical task but an act of safeguarding irreplaceable human knowledge for future generations. If you’re equally passionate about Indian heritage, manuscripts, and visual storytelling, explore programs at Parul University, such as Bachelor of Visual Arts in Applied Arts and B.Des in Communication Design to Master of Visual Arts in Art & Heritage Management, Master of Visual Arts in Applied Arts, and Master of Design in Design Management and Communication Strategy.